Competition breeds innovation. That's the spirit of the X Prize Foundation, which organizes competitions with the intention of spurring technological advancement. One of those competitions netted Elastec/American Marine, Inc. of Carmi, Ill. a million-dollar prize for an innovation that promises to revolutionize the way oil spills are cleaned up.

Elastec/American Marine developed an oil recovery device that retrieved 4,706 gallons of oil per minute in calm water and 4,633 gallons of oil per minute in wavy conditions — more than three times the highest rate previously achieved in the oil spill recovery industry under controlled conditions.

Donnie Wilson, co-founder and CEO of Elastec/American Marine, appears this week on "Newsmakers," a weekly public-affairs television program coproduced by WNIN-PBS and the Courier & Press. The following is an edited transcript of Wilson's interview with Courier & Press Editor Mizell Stewart III. The entire interview can be seen today at 11:30 a.m. on WNIN.

Mizell Stewart: What prompted your company to enter the X Prize competition?

Donnie Wilson: That's our business. We manufacture oil spill equipment in tiny little Carmi and we've been doing it for 20 years. We became aware of the X Prize contest through the Internet. The X Prize Foundation was well known because of its prior competition to put a vehicle in space.

Stewart: And they actually came up with a contest to see who could come up with a way to remove oil from water — in other words, speeding up the process of cleaning up oil spills?

Wilson: It was actually Wendy Schmidt, the wife of Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google, who put up the money. It was based on what was learned in the BP oil spill (the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010), where there didn't seem to be equipment available to handle large-volume oil recovery. So she put up the prize money and the challenge went out to oil recovery companies. There were 350 ideas reviewed and ultimately 10 chosen. We were one of those 10, and that's what got us in the prize competition.

Stewart: Your company was actually involved in the Deepwater Horizon cleanup using a boom technology?

Wilson: We were called three days after the accident. BP was looking for the best available technologies and we manufacture a fire-resistant containment boom where we can take this boom offshore, capture oil and actually burn it offshore. That offers a high-volume solution for getting rid of spilled oil.

Stewart: What did you all learn at the Deepwater Horizon cleanup that led your company to try to win the X Prize?

Wilson: We never developed a fully-fledged offshore oil skimming system. For one thing, it was going to be very expensive to do. We like to bring solutions to the industry, and we really didn't have the opportunity or time to develop such a product. But knowing that there was a need for that and the X Prize challenge — making us do in 90 days what would have taken us years to do — forced us to bring our best game to the table and win the prize.

Stewart: The device that you all invented is literally revolutionary. What you came up with removed almost twice as much oil from water in a fixed period of time than your nearest competitor, whether or not you had calm water or wave action. You are essentially using a principle that oil and water don't mix and that oil interacts with plastic in a certain way. Can you walk us through that?

Wilson: There were three or four items that we incorporated into the unit. Once the oil goes inside, it cannot escape. Finally, our grooved disc technology, which is what you are talking about with plastic. It recovers the oil selectively and leaves the water behind.

Stewart: So the interaction between the oil, the water and the rotating plastic disc is what removes the oil from the water.

Wilson: That's correct. It also leaves the water behind so we're not doing additional separation. We want to pick up the oil and leave the water behind with the groove technology.